The Tatras Mountain Hut – Part 1: Whiteout

"Sit," said Piotr. "Not there. Closer to the stove."

"I'm fine."

"Your lips are blue."

Daniel sat. It was four in the afternoon on a grey late-October day, and a blizzard had been hurling snow at the mountains for two hours. He had left the trail at noon in sunshine. Now the whole world was white and howling, and he had been rescued, more or less, by a man in a thick grey sweater with a wooden spoon in one hand.

The hut was a long timber building high in the Tatras, with low beams, a woodstove roaring in the corner and a row of bunks along one wall. Lanterns glowed amber. Boots steamed on a rack. It smelled of pine smoke, onions and warm bread.

Piotr, thirty-five, the warden, was broad and bearded with sleepy dark eyes and a slow, careful voice. He put a bowl of thick vegetable soup in Daniel's hands. "Eat. Then we talk."

Daniel was thirty-one, a hydrologist from Warsaw, and he had broken the first rule of mountain walking by ignoring the forecast. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm usually sensible."

"No one is sensible on a good day." Piotr smiled. "I'm glad you walked here."

The storm kept them in for three days. The only other guest, an elderly Czech couple, left on the second morning with a sledge. By the third evening, Daniel and Piotr were alone, playing cards by the stove, with the wind howling and the lamps burning low.

"I've been here eleven winters," said Piotr. "I like it quiet. But this one is not quiet. It is... pleasant."

"I'm glad."

"Daniel." Piotr put down his cards. "I would like to ask you something. If you say no, I will make more soup."

"Ask."

"May I kiss you?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – Snowed In.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Snowed In.